iSoft completes eight RIS installations in London

iSoft’s RadCentre radiology information system has been installed successfully into eight London trusts as part of a £3.9m deal with BT under the National Programme for IT, the company announced yesterday.

RadCentre is iSoft’s radiology information system (RIS) designed to deliver radiology support across a multi-user computer network, enabling personal computers to be linked to a central dedicated file server. It removes traditional bottlenecks through the use of tools such as integrated digital dictation and integrates with a trust’s picture archiving and communications system (PACS).

iSoft have been working with BT over a period of 18 months to deploy the systems in the eight specified BT trusts to work alongside the Philips PACS systems implemented by BT, local service provider for London.

The eight NHS trusts covered by the NPfIT contract with BT are Barking, Havering & Redbridge, St Mary’s Paddington, Moorfields Eye Hospital, Barts and the Royal London, North West London, Royal National Orthopaedic, Chelsea and Westminster, and Ealing.

iSoft UK and Ireland’s managing director, Paul Richards, told E-Health Insider: “The trusts will see huge improvements in areas such as appointment booking, scheduling and waiting list management, which will help them achieve their targets by making more efficient use of staff time and resources so enabling improvements to patient care.

“For example, some trusts have halved the time to produce diagnostic imaging reports, and with access to detailed diagnostic reports and images anywhere in the hospital, doctors have the information they need to make vital decisions quickly.

“The iSoft RIS coupled with the trust PACS solution puts an end to the difficulties and delays in locating and retrieving images and reports, saving clerical time, improving clinical care and providing a much more efficient service for doctors and patients alike.”

A spokesperson for BT told EHI: “We are pleased with the work iSoft has done for us and look forward to carrying on our relationship with the company.”

An iSoft spokesperson added that the work had taken roughly three months per site to complete, due to the different systems used in the trusts, and iSoft now plan to upgrade all ten sites to the latest version of RadCentre, which will include real-time voice recognition.

Richards said: “Being able to send a voice file electronically is a huge improvement over conventional cassette tapes. Radiologists can flag those reports that need transcribing urgently and there is no risk of tapes being misplaced or delays in getting them to the typists.”

Upgrade work is expected to start within the next month and iSoft are contracted to offer support to BT RadCentre trusts until 2011.

RadCentre is currently used by 43 NHS trusts nationally including a further ten London trusts outside of NPfIT.

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